In Defense of Jean Colson

Strong Evidence That John Wrote the Fourth Gospel
Testify | 23 Jan. 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jaLCzTrjJY

0:52 Jewish (or perhaps in his own terminology preferrably Israelite, after Jamnia) - also true if John was a Cohen (a nephew of the first hagiographer several generations down the line).

2:32 What are the five bodies of water?

You didn't list Sea of Galilee in the other video.

Ah, he calls it "lake Tiberias" ... sorry.

3:20 - an eyewitness : perfectly compatible with his being a lesser disciple than one of the twelve and his being a Cohen.

There is a textual reference saying all of the twelve scattered, but the eyewitness to the Crucifixion didn't.

His being a Cohen would also explain his knowing the High Priest and observing Peter, the one of the twelve who scattered a bit later than the rest.

Kearlan Ventures

@kearlanventures

These analyses are mostly “logic” exercises. We can’t (probably) ever know for sure. So the issue starts with: “does anything eliminate John the the apostle?” No. Do we have good reason to believe this was written by an eyewitness (likely via scribe)? Yes. Is John the apostle as candidate for being an eyewitness? Of course. Etc. So key takeaway is John isn’t eliminated.

Sure, none of that proves it wasn’t some lesser and latter eyewitness. Heck, doesn’t even definitively prove it was an eyewitness. Some could go as far as to say there could be no “eyewitness” because all of this myth. Etc. So the exercise isn’t about definitive proof*. It’s about when we line up everything we have: eyewitness details, reference to “*the disciple Jesus loved”(used as a “title”in 4 verses), 2nd century attestations, etc. AND we assume there was a Jesus, “what explanations fit the data?” and “what explanations fit the data the best?” A lesser priestly disciple fits but doesn’t fit as well as the theory of John. Just my $0.02.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@kearlanventures The one point against John one of the twelve is, he stood under the Cross, while a text says ALL the ones who had been in Gethsemane with Him fled, scattered.

Less cogently, but not by much, a man who survived dipping in boiling oil and who put himself down in a grave he had dug is credited with being the Gospeller, while in very old martyrologies, dec. 27 is for James and John, both dying as martyrs - and Christ said they would both die as martyrs.

Kearlan Ventures

@hglundahl I think you're referring to Matthew 26:56 (correct me if I'm wrong) which says "Then all the disciples left Him and fled." This, read literally, of course excludes any disciple, not just the 12. Yet John says at least one, the "beloved" disciple, was in fact at the cross (and we know it was a male --lmk if I need to clarify). One possibility is that Matthew is referring to the garden, but John is actually later at Golgatha and so it's not referring to the same event. John 18:15 suggests Peter and "another disciple" followed Jesus after Gethsemane. I think there is a similar reference in Luke IIRC too.This doesn't argue for John the apostle per se, it just doesn't exclude him vs any other disciple. I think John Mark could fit this too from what I recall (can't recall the rebuttals to that at the moment)...

☆𝕫𝕠𝕣𝕠☆

@zorokang067

Again, these books came out at a time where the people who wanted to refute the claims were alive to do that. Plus, a myth takes a lot longer to form than what it did, ESPECIALLY something as big as this.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@kearlanventures "This, read literally, of course excludes any disciple, not just the 12. Yet John says at least one, the "beloved" disciple, was in fact at the cross (and we know it was a male --lmk if I need to clarify)."

And Jean Colson reads it contextually as "all of the twelve" or "all who were there" (that is, the twelve).

Logically it can hardly mean that all five hundred witnesses fled even those who weren't there (or the Temple Guard would have been no match for them).

So, the Beloved Disciple was not there in Gethsemani. He did not flee. There is no contradiction.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@zorokang067 I don't think anyone on this thread has taken a mythicist approach, whom are you talking to?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@kearlanventures "John 18:15 suggests Peter and "another disciple" followed Jesus after Gethsemane."

Correct, but while Peter at first stopped fleeing with his feet, he then fled with his tongue, by denying.

Kearlan Ventures

@hglundahl This continues to presume that the events in garden and w/ high priest—where all the disciples fled—is the same as the events at the cross. They are not. They cannot logically be the same. So the “disciples fled” data point doesn’t add to our understanding here.

Also if we read “disciple” across these contexts to be limited to “the 12” then the reference to “ disciple who Jesus loved” should also be constrained that way. Again, we can remove that constraint throughout, or say the contexts are different and so it means different things in each context, but both of those approaches are less cogent than giving the word “disciple” a consistent meaning across these uses. And there’s no inconsistency in doing so once it’s understood these aren’t the same events.

☆𝕫𝕠𝕣𝕠☆

Hey! Sorry, I was talking to @kearlanventures. @hglundahl

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@kearlanventures "This continues to presume that the events in garden and w/ high priest—where all the disciples fled—is the same as the events at the cross."

You forget that the Beloved Disciple was already not fleeing the very same night.

The 11 disciples at first, as we know from Mark, did not believe. They were still mentally in this flight.

Remember, for the Beloved Disciple to be among them, he need on Jean Colson's theory not be one of the twelve, since on his theory he was the host of them all, and was also hosting the Blessed Virgin since Good Friday.

"then the reference to “ disciple who Jesus loved” should also be constrained that way."

Not same passage, not same context. So, not so constrained.

Kearlan Ventures

@hglundahl Good discussion first of all. But I think you’re missing the point I’m making. I’m not arguing that the Beloved Disciple is in fact John the Apostle. Nor even John Mark, John “the elder,” or any “lesser” disciple. What I’m saying is that the passages you reference don’t exclude John the Apostle from candidacy. We’re all, including Colson, welcome to make assumptions but there’s nothing in the texts themselves that eliminate John the Apostle because the reference to the disciple at the cross is a different event, as you admit, from the reference in Matthew. (Notably, the extrinsic record, which we’re intentionally not looking at, also doesn’t exclude John the Apostle.)

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@kearlanventures The extrinsic record actually seems to have somewhat different fates for John and John, unless you limit yourself to mainstream post-Irenaeus.

John of Zebedee seems to have died as a martyr boiled in water. John the Beloved survived boiling in oil (even if it is in an account that identifies him with the son of Zebedee).

Jean Colson considers the martyrdom of John of Zebedee confirmed in the prophecy of martyrdom by Jesus (drink of the chalice that I drink of).

This differs from the life story (which Colson considered a novel, I disagree) where John the Gospeller dug himself a grave, stepped down, there was a light and after that one saw mannah.

Other argument, John the Gospeller had connexions with the priests and probably a house in Jerusalem or surroundings ("And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own." John 19:27).

Most prominent argument : if the Gospeller was the host and not one of the twelve, it very well explains why the First Eucharist wasn't described by him -- he had left his guests between them.

MaryG

@maryqwe1118

@hglundahl the fact that everyone goes away at the Getsemani doesn't mean they stayed away from Jesus till his death. In fact it Is also stated that Peter follows Jesus when he Denise him 3 times. Also if we consider what the gospel say tò be Truth they even Say that the 12 apostoles and Jesus were at the supper so the beloved one was probably one of them

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@maryqwe1118 The host was also present at the last supper.

The thesis of Jean Colson is, John the Beloved was actually the host.

MaryG

@hglundahl Oh I begin saying the least important concerns of mine about this theory: when John and Peter prepare for the supper it doesn't appear that they know the host, who also has a servant(why and apostole so close to Jesus is still that rich to own a servant and so on) I don't know, the disciple who Jesus love says to be a witness of the facts and it would be weird if he was talking only from the last supper on, he has to be one close to him that follows him from the beginning, so the disciples would have know him. The host is presented ( in other gospels) as one not particolarly known.

But , most importantly, why one should reject completly the idea that John the apostole wrote it when for decades it was believed so, and accepting more the idea that the witness is the host of the supper just because one or mabye two dudes from the last centuries theorize so? If you consider weak the things that lead to John being the witness, the clues leading to other specific people are way weaker. I mean Imagine if christian tradition would have say from the beginning that the host was the beloved disciple based on the same things, would't we be, even more, be saying that this thesis is absurd and based on basically nothing?

MaryG

@hglundahl also i night add, it is never stated that the disciple that follows Peter tò the yard of the Priest is the beloved one, some people just think it could be based I don't know on what ( After all It seems he always refers to him as the beloved one from last supper on, not some random disciple)

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@maryqwe1118 "when John and Peter prepare for the supper it doesn't appear that they know the host"

At all, or in advance of the meeting it would be him?

"who also has a servant(why and apostole so close to Jesus is still that rich to own a servant and so on)"

Why not?

Emotional or moral closeness doesn't necessarily imply closeness in everyday life, as for the twelve.

"The host is presented ( in other gospels) as one not particolarly known."

Wouldn't it make sense to keep still about him, while he was hosting God's Mother as his new Mother?

Like to keep Her out of persecution?

"the disciple who Jesus love says to be a witness of the facts"

I think that's facts in Jerusalem and about the Crucifixion.

Actual evidence would involve Asia Minor Fathers actually seeming to distinguish two John's (I fully accept the Beloved was called John, and that he was the prophet of ...

The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to make known to his servants the things which must shortly come to pass: and signified, sending by his angel to his servant John
[Apocalypse (Revelation) 1:1]

Jean Colson didn't find one single Asia Minor father who identified John the Gospeller with John of Zebedee. Except St. Irenaeus who left Asia Minor at age 16, and who could therefore have brought a youthful misunderstanding along to the West.

Also, while he didn't believe the Apostle Life of St. John (Vita Ioannis Apostoli), he did agree with it that John the Gospeller died an old man, peacefully. He found both an implication in Christ's words to the twelve (Matthew 20) and a confirmation in an old Gallican martyrology that John of Zebedee was actually martyred.

3:28 As a Cohen, there would have been no problem in knowing Nicodemus, and the machinations of the Sanhedrin after the raising of Lazarus.

MaryG

As a Cohen he would have had a lot of problems of going and entire night fishing in lake Tiberiade thought (as the beloved disciple does), considering how the lake Is famous for strong and sudden storms and considering how dangerous was fishing back then even for Expert fishermen.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@maryqwe1118 First, we do not see that all Cohens were all the time in service. St. John the Baptist was certainly not in service when he served as a prophet.

But we do also not see any identification of any one at the see of Galilee with the Beloved Disciple.

Usually one goes with an indirect one, namely Fisherman = son of Zebedee = beloved Disciple.

However, if the Beloved Disciple was not the son of Zebedee, how do we know he was ever a fisherman in a boat on Genesareth?

3:41 A Cohen would have been very well familiar with how long it took the temple to get built.

Truth Be Bold

@truthbebold4009

I'm not familiar with Cohen. Could you give some clarification? Thanks

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@truthbebold4009 Cohen = Old Testament Priest, Descendent of Aaron.

Truth Be Bold

@hglundahl Ahhh thank you good sir 🙏

4:48 Would the 72 not have been told how the 12 were called?

Were only the twelve going along to Samaria or present at the feeding of the 5000?

4:50 All of Jesus' visits to Jerusalem - would equally apply if he was a Cohen who as disciple and house owner in Jerusalem hosted Jesus (yeah, the one who had two donkeys prepared).

5:36 "a few more than the twelve might have been there" - like, for instance, the host, the owner of the house.

Who, unlike the twelve, was not ordained Catholic priest that day and was therefore not present at the Eucharist.

5:51 If it's correct the Blessed Virgin was in her early years in the Temple, entrusting Her to a disciple who was also a Cohen would make sense.

And a lesser one than the twelve would give Her some well needed repose, rather than expose Her to dangers - the John who accompanied Peter in Acts 4 was arguably running risky errands, was one of the twelve. Could the one hosting the Blessed Mother be the other John mentioned there, who went with Caiaphas?

6:37 I think the first early Church Father who explicitly identified John the Beloved with John the Son of Zebedee was St. Irenaeus, while those back in Asia Minor didn't.

One says "we have known John, who has worn the golden head band" - why mention that in response to the Pope, if he could have said "who was one of the twelve"?

augustinian2018

@augustinian2018

I wasn’t aware Irenaeus ever identified the apostle John as John the son of Zebedee—do you have a reference, by chance?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@augustinian2018 The question is rather whether he attributed John the Apostle-Gospeller as John-one-of-the-Twelve-Apostles. It seems he did, I do not have references at hand, Fr Jean Colson in his 1968 work (nihil obstat and imprimi potest in Paris archdiocese) argued this was a misunderstanding, the Gospeller was actually a Cohen, and not one of the twelve, the actual meal of the last Supper happened in his house (hence the Last Supper Discourses recalled by him), but he was leaving his guests among themselves when God in the Flesh held Himself in His hands, hence no account of the Eucharist (the son of Zebedee being obviously one of those then present, but he wrote no Gospel, maybe his brother, rather than God's wrote the Epistle).

And Fr. Jean Colson obviously quoted with citations somewhere the place where St. Irenaeus considered the fourth Gospeller as one of the Twelve. His work?

L'énigme du disciple que Jésus aimait, appeared in print and bookshops April 1969, Beauchesne.

It's years since I read it, so this is the best I can do.

augustinian2018

@hglundahl I’m familiar with the thesis that John the Evangelist was not one and the same as John the son of Zebedee from Richard Bauckham’s book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. His analysis of Irenaeus was that the apostle John who taught Polycarp and wrote the Gospel is never actually identified as the son of Zebedee; the two people most frequently called apostles in Irenaeus’s works are Paul and John, and Bauckham argues that Irenaeus’s use of the word ‘apostle’ in reference to John carries the same meaning as it does in reference to Paul, as Paul was not a member of the twelve but was nonetheless an apostle. Bauckham built much his case on the fragments of Papias (early 2nd century bishop of Hierapolis) and Polycrates (late 2nd century bishop of Ephesus, the city where John wrote his Gospel); whether Papias refers to one or two Johns is ultimately ambiguous, though there is a strong case to be made that he refers to two (Eusebius seems to read him that way, though Eusebius harbors strong biases against Papias on other grounds). There is also a 5th century fragment of Papias (in a history by Philipp of Side) that says the sons of Zebedee were both martyred, seemingly contradicting other early tradition about John the Evangelist if we take him to be the son of Zebedee. Polycrates definitely identifies John the beloved (and by the extension, the Evangelist) as someone other than John the son of Zebedee—he identifies him as a hiereus/cohen/temple priest (which seems to be the source one of the authors you mentioned was drawing on; given Polycrates had access to local tradition about John from within a century of John’s death, I do give quite a bit of credence to him).

I don’t consider the case that John the son of Zebedee was not John the Evangelist to be conclusive by any means, but I do incline toward that view as a result of Bauckham’s argument. I sometimes quip that my son, John Polycarp, is named after John the Evangelist and possibly John the son of Zebedee. Nevertheless, I’m due to re-read the surviving works of Irenaeus sometime soon, so I’ll keep my eyes peeled for identification of Irenaeus’s John the apostle with John the son of Zebedee; I find it entirely plausible that Bauckham missed something explicitly linking the son of Zebedee to the Evangelist in Irenaeus.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@augustinian2018 I have not yet read Bauckham.

Thanks for mentioning the 500 and Andronicus and Junia and Paul are apostles but not of the twelve.

Good point.

6:40 "traditional authorship of John's Gospel" - if the tradition had been universal, as I hinted it wasn't, I don't think Fr. Jean Colson would have disputed it.

Another hint, John who dies in Ephesus never became bishop there. Why would one of the twelve not be bishop over others? They were the first bishops.

Council of Florence

@councilofflorence4896

The tradition was in fact, universal. John was a Bishop, but not of Ephesus. We see in Apocalypse that John orders multiple Churches. John did not live at Ephesus, he would travel there and preach. Paul was not Bishop of Corinth, but clearly he was a Bishop.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@councilofflorence4896 A prophet may certainly write to bishops without being their bishop.

He also adresses people as "sunpresbuteroi" which is easiest to explain if he was of the lower sacerdotium.

13th or 14th Nisan, the Last Supper?

Did John Contradict Mark on the Day Jesus Died? | Useful Charts Response
Testify | 19 March 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkryoVskf6A

18:01 "which every Jew knows means the day before Saturday"

Not in the context of Pesakh. Then it means the day after Sunset of which the Pesakh begins with the Seder.

I may have been a bit hasty on this one.

18:51 It may be noted, Matt Baker is using a pre-determined Hebrew calendar. This has been the case since Hillel II. That's after Julian failed to restore the Temple, and the Sanhedrin was dissolved.

However, in Our Lord's day, the beginning of a month was by observation of the New Moon.

And, it may simply be, Our Lord observed the New Moon one evening earlier than the temple did, and as He was in Galilee, separated from the temple by Samaria, He relied on His observation.

St. John who says it was "the day of preparation of the Jews" usually as narrator uses "Jews" of the enemies of Jesus, even if Jesus when speaking uses it of His nation.

Ooops, it seems Nestle Aland does have "Jews" in 19:14, but not in genitive of parascheue ... either way, Pilate would be concerned with the date held by the Temple and the population of Jerusalem, which had mostly all of them been in Jerusalem at the beginning of Nisan.

st r

@str.77

You cannot observe the New Moon a day earlier (than the astronomical date), only a day later. Galileo [Galilee, I presume] had no separate festival calendar but was thoroughly Jewish.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@str.77 It doesn't occur to you that the astronomical date varies with your time zone. If you go West, you can come to a place where the astronomic date is one day earlier.

It could also happen that the High Priest Kaiaphas did observe the New Moon one day late that year.

And Galilee would have known by the time Jesus was already in Jerusalem or on his way through Samaria. The news would have been carried by riders. And they could have had an order to avoid speaking to Jesus.

21:40 But Our Lord died c. 3pm. So, lambs were sacrificed.

23:08 You are aware that the prophecy Our Lord fulfilled was a law by Moses about the passover lambs?

Numbers 9:12 has the closest correspondence.

Mark 14:12 - the disciples obviously had been with Jesus in Galilee, so they would also have begun Nisan one day earlier than the temple, if my hypothesis is correct.

25:02 It's not a question of "two different calendars" it is a question of one calendar depending on when the newmoon of Nisan is observed.

There was not any preset calendar determining in advance how many days the previous Adar or second Adar had.

In France a few years ago, perhaps about ten years ago, Muslims in the West of the country and Muslims in the East of the country disagreed on what day Ramadan began, because Ramadan still works like any Jewish month, including Nisan, did then.

Caesaraea Philippi is further West than Jerusalem, so Our Lord can have observed the New moon one evening earlier than the Temple did.

This would by the way, along with how I found it in Nestle Aland, add up to John the Gospeller having been in Jerusalem, as a Cohen, rather than in Galilee, which is the thesis of Jean Colson.

st r

Caesarea Philippi is further EAST but why would Jesus use any supposed different day from that city. No such dare existed because feast days and the cskebdar were determined by the Temple and uniform for all Jews (except the Essenes with their own calendar).

No person called "John the Gospeller" ever existed. Do you mean John the Evangelist? He definitely didn't serve as a priest.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@str.77 According to the thesis of Jean Colson, one of the references to him, right place and right time, and right name, is "John, who wore the golden head band" ...

Why He would? Because He was in Galilee, and could not know the beginning of Nisan from the Temple before the riders came up, by which time He was already in Samaria on His way to Jerusalem.

BUT If someone hasn't fiddled with wikipedia, you just destroyed a theory of mine.

Caesarea is 35°41′40″E and Jerusalem only 35°13'.

I went after how it looked visually on a map, without checking the coordinates, my bad.*

Other theory, Kaiaphas (who was the "last Pope" of the Old Testament) actually gave Jesus permission to celebrate Pesakh one day early.

@str.77 By the way, Gospeller and Evangelist mean the same thing.

And if you think of St. John of Zebedee, Jean Colson thinks he was NOT the Gospeller.

Or thought, but could still think so if he was right. He died in the meantime.

*

Or I could have checked the coordinates of Caesarea Maritima, 34°53′30″E.

28:20 Your explanation is even better than mine, so, you have just about destroyed the idea behind Michael Caerularius' claim "Jesus must have used leavened breads" ...

I'm glad to be back in Catholicism, as revert from Orthodoxy!

Ciprian-Ionut Panait

@Ciprian-IonutPanait

but he did use leavened. Also the fact is not that relevant except for catholics since the bread is transformed into the body of Christ. I am sorry to hear you return to the catholic heresies

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Ciprian-IonutPanait "but he did use leavened."

According to what?

Ciprian-Ionut Panait

@hglundahl according to the gospels. In greek unlike english there are different words for leavened and unlevened bread. asumos for unleavened and artos for leaven. This was kept in some romance languages like romanian azime/lipie (as a note sometimes lipie is not used with the meaning of azime but is the correct meaning) versus paine but this is not present in english. In the gospels it says as the first day of the asumos was coming the disciples asked Iesus where they would eat the Pascha.... And then he had thanked, broken the artos and said: This is my body... Basically the last supper had happened the evening between 13 and 14 Nissan. 14 Nissan was considered the first day of the feast because in the morning they would eat or remove all artos from the house and then prepare for the actual feast including cutting the lambs. As a note most would fast from the morning meal to the evening one in this day. Catholics go against this belief insisting on using asumos. While not a mistake from the first centuries christians tried to separate themselves from jews that did not accept Iesus when it came to the celebration of Passover, starting from the date, the usage of artos and so on.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Ciprian-IonutPanait "asumos for unleavened and artos for leaven."


Sorry, but:
"ho azymos artos" is unlevened bread
"ho zymotos artos" is leavened bread

Azymos and Zymotos are adjectives, and artos is the word for bread in both cases.

In the time of Caerularios, "ho azymos artos" was shortened to "ho azymos" so as to have "azymos" feel like a noun. He projected this late usage into the much earlier texts of the New Testament.

Your history of the last supper is mangled. Here is a quote from the Gospel of St. Matthew, chapter 26:

17 And on the first day of the Azymes, the disciples came to Jesus, saying: Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the pasch 18 But Jesus said: Go ye into the city to a certain man, and say to him: the master saith, My time is near at hand, with thee I make the pasch with my disciples. 19 And the disciples did as Jesus appointed to them, and they prepared the pasch.

This was obviously, at least to Jesus and His disciples, the 14th of Nisan. Preparing pasch = throwing out leavened bread to birds, and so on.

"While not a mistake from the first centuries christians tried to separate themselves from jews that did not accept Iesus when it came to the celebration of Passover, starting from the date, the usage of artos and so on."

It is probable that the use of zymotos artos came for the motive you mentioned, overriding what Jesus had actually done, and that in the region of the later Byzantine and Hierosolymite, perhaps also Antiochene patriarchies.

Alexandria and Rome, meanwhile, used azymos artos, which occasioned Caerularius to pretend the Latin usage was "a Jewish and Coptic/Monophysite heresy" ...

29:21 John not mentioning the dispute could be bc he was the host (as Jean Colson argued).

Contra Hume

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Contra Hume · Great Bishop of Geneva! Atheists Tend to Take Over a Protestant Attitude to Catholic Legend

Testify / Erik Manning refers to Charles Leslie, here:

Can Miracles Pass Historical Tests?
Testify | 27 April 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SloawhX38Wk

A disagreement, or two, but not on the main point:

5:28 "those were known to be mythologies not based on historical claims"

I'd disagree for some.

The real takeaway about such pagan deities is basically that there were no uncontrovertible divine miracles.

1) The stampeding to death of Hippolytus the son of Theseus could be demons getting into a herd of horses. Making Poseidon a demon, which I'd agree with. Probably pronounced "potei Daon" in that time, which should ring some vibes.
2) The generation of Romulus, there are two possibilities. There was some hitch in the imprisonment, so Rea Silvia got pregnant the normal way, or a demon did what certain doctors do this day. Note, in such a case, as St. Augustine notes about women who got pregnant after dreaming of fauns, the experience would have been definitely unvirginal.
3) Delphic oracle didn't "accurately predict" the misfortunes of Laios, Iocasta, Oedipus. A demon made a couple of self fulfilling prophecies. He calculated the prophecies in such ways that it would very probably push divers actors to the very fatal actions. If it had failed with the son of Laios, it would have succeeded with someone else, sooner or later, among people who were exposing themselves to demons by consulting a Pythia in the first place.

If I'd take Charles Leslie's view on these "not being based on historical claims" I'd be forced to allow for similar doubts on events that happened thousands of years before the time of Moses, like the Fall of Adam in Genesis 3 (a very key event in Christian theology).

So, I'd say these pagan examples, are mainly events that happened publically and before the senses of people.

1) The hero cult of Hippolytus in Athens commemorates it. I do not have access now to scholarly research on how far back before Euripides' time one can trace that memory of Hippolytus, but my point is, the memory can have been there even if the altar/tomb shifted.

Fearful Symmetry: The Two Tombs of Hippolytus, Francis M. Dunn, 1992; I can just access a page on JSTOR, not the whole article, even less the book.

2) As I said there are two possibilities on how Romulus was made, that was not a public event, and the demonic version doesn't involve senses functioning normally in Rea Silvia.

But a couple of twin brothers killing Amulius would have been a very public event, as would their claim to be sons of Rea Silvia and grandsons of deposed Numitor.

AND the founding of Rome.

3) Iocaste getting buried after a suicide, Oedipus leaving Thebes with eyes gouged out, his sons with Iocaste fighting each other, killing each other, Creon taking over, would all have happened before the senses of people.

The consultations of the Pythia would have involved people in their normal senses, except the Pythia in a state of trance and one abused by demons.

The hitch would definitely be to some that so long time passed between pre-Trojan war events (i e prior to 1180 BC) and 5th C. tragedians. Or Romulus (around the time of Homer) and Quintus Fabius Pictor (lost but cited by Dionysius of Halicarnassus). But if we don't accept that memories of events can live on for long and be preserved with decent accuracy, or changes reflect changes in ideology, we are hard set to account for Moses knowing of the Genesis 3 events. Like Babel and unlike pre-Flood giants and Flood, it's not an event which can be presumed historical bc universally recalled all over different traditions of mankind.

On the other hand, if we do accept the historicity (though not "theology") of these events, we will see that Hindu tradition gives external confirmation for Genesis 4 and 6 in Mahabharata. Pandavas were fighting Kauravas, not in post-Flood India, but in pre-Flood land of Nod, east of Eden, or one of its colonies.

However, Ganesha being born to a "god" not very unlike Apollon, on a very high mountain far from human society, getting decapitated and having his head replaced by an elephant's head is obviously unhistorical. Key consideration, apart from improbabilities, all of that happened far from human society. That's however far from being the case with all Pagan mythology.

6:08 — 6:16
"that said reportedly Conyers Middleton infamous for his written drummings of ecclesiastical miracles looked fruitlessly for decades for one"

I would say that Hume was in a very different position for Conyers Middleton, about ecclesiastical miracles.

He was part of his time in France and pretty certainly heard of a Catholic miracle there.

So, in order to reject it, he came up with his philosophy, which is very roundabout, and he had to reject it in order to remain a Protestant, and he had to remain a Protestant to have a social standing on returning to Scotland.

Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791, as the title of the wiki suggests with at least some probability, came in 1791. By then, Hume had been dead for 15 years.

I look up Middleton in the wiki.

"The years 1747–8 produced Middleton's most significant theological writings. The Introductory Discourse and the Free Inquiry [16] addressed "the miraculous powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the church from the earliest ages." Middleton suggested two propositions: that ecclesiastical miracles must be accepted or rejected in the mass; and that there is a distinction between the authority due to the early Church Fathers' testimony to the beliefs and practices of their times, and their credibility as witnesses to matters of fact."

If Middleton had accepted the credibility of Church Fathers writing on miracles that happened some decades earlier (pretty parallel to the case some are making for the Gospels, if they deny Matthean priority, right?), he would have been forced to accept continued miracles among Catholics, and from absence of miracles among Anglicans have had to conclude that the Catholic Church was the true Church. At this time, he was more than 41 years before the relief act, and on top of that, in 1747 he had married his third wife, not uncanonically according to Catholic theology, the two previous ones having died, but as a third time husband he could not even get a dispensation to be a married priest, since a Catholic married man who becomes a priest is very strictly held to ...

Oportet ergo episcopum irreprehensibilem esse, unius uxoris virum, sobrium, prudentem, ornatum, pudicum, hospitalem, doctorem,
Diaconi sint unius uxoris viri, qui filiis suis bene praesint, et suis domibus.
Si quis sine crimine est, unius uxoris vir, filios habens fideles, non in accusatione luxuriae, aut non subditos.
1 Timothy 3:2, 1 Timothy 3:12, Titus 1:6

Not as a minimum, but as a maximum. A layman can have remarried as a widower, but a bishop or deacon or between them a priest, can't.

If Middleton had left England to become a Catholic on the continent, he'd have had to look for another job. And since he was older than I, that would have been irksome, like it would be very irksome for me not to get a living from my writings.

Apologetics, Comments on Erik Manning / Testify, Two Videos

Sheik Uthman's SILLY "Bible Contradiction"
Testify | 14 Oct. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6F5RCFsqE4

0:53 Two possible solutions.

1) LXX and Vulgate and Douay Rheims are right : forty thousand in 3 Kings 4:26 too;
2) different types of stalls (chariot only vs chariot + horses).

Yungy Karma

3 Kings?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Yungy Karma In Hebrew, There was a man of Ramathaimsophim, of mount Ephraim, and his name was Elcana, the son of Jeroham, the son of Eliu, the son of Thohu, the son of Suph, an Ephraimite: to And David built there an altar to the Lord, and offered holocausts and peace offerings: and the Lord became merciful to the land, and the plague was stayed from Israel. is the (single) Book of Samuel, and Now king David was old, and advanced in years: and when he was covered with clothes, he was not warm. to And he appointed him a continual allowance, which was also given him by the king day by day, all the days of his life. is the (single) Book of Kings.

In the LXX, the two works are instead four, and called I to IV Kings, same as in the Vulgate.

Only the Protestants kept the division, but reintroduced Samuel as a book name, and made I and II Kings I and II Samuel, III and IV Kings I and II Kings.

2:06 What happened was not that books that had never been canonic were suddenly canonised.

What happened was that books that had recently been disputed by some learned men were reaffirmed as canonised on the level of an Ecumenic Council, like local councils had canonised them in Rome and Carthage at the same time as we find the first complete canon of the NT.

2:26 Backseat ... does it when discussing with Jews?

Some Jews will pretend the NT is misciting the Tanakh, what really happened was usually that the NT hagiographer cited the LXX translation - the one where we consistently do find the "extra" books.

The Masoretic version, often called "the original Hebrew" is actually a 1000 years younger than the LXX.

I wouldn't trust it on all issues, like it omits material from Jeremiah (33:14 to end includes a promise of the Church of Christ : 1) having sacrifices in the Eucharist, 2) remaining to the end of times).

But I will also not trust an omission that first favours Judaism (Baruch 3 says (the wisdom of) God Afterwards he was seen upon earth, and conversed with men.) and then Protestant errors (II Maccabees 12 says It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.)

Here we might recall, the Vulgate has a complete Jeremiah and also Baruch and II Maccabees.

Testify

I wasn't referring to Jews obviously.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Testify You were forgetting them.

I can't afford it.

Resuming the video later:

1:28 While Franzelin and Vigouroux only hold to real inspiration and verbal providential protection, Vigouroux admits that most generations of Christians when speaking on the matter at least spoke as if holding to verbal inspiration.

St. Thomas Aquinas actually says "Spiritu Sancto dictante" when on the one hand referring to the six creation days, and on the other hand refusing to take firmly one of the sides in "six literal days" vs "one moment" versions of Creation.

The Latin means "with the Holy Ghost giving dictation" ...

1:47 The number of books can be settled by two close localities which are at a certain distance on the road.

The Catholic numbering is "72, or of Baruch is counted as a separate book from Jeremias, 73" meaning the number of books is somewhat fluid 72 / 73 for whole Bible and 45 / 46 for the OT.

The distance between Thessalonica and Beroea is 73 km or 45 miles. Miles being an older measure of voyage length than km.

2:08 Thank you for speaking of "canonised during the time of the Reformation" but the Council of Trent was actually reaffirming the Bible canons of Pope St. Damasus I, synod of Rome, and the subsequent synod of Carthage. These being also the first two occasions we meet a complete and exclusive NT canon.

It was more like Luther decanonised 7 books and 7 book parts, by decontextualising Romans 3:2 as referring (incorrectly) to what St. John calls Jews in his Gospel, i e the Christ-rejectors.

It referred on the contrary to the nation which when St. Paul was young and before Jesus died on the Cross practised the as yet correct Second Temple Judaism. Which included people who accepted the disputed Bible parts. Probably St. Timothy, who was a Greek speaking Jew, did. Probably in Acts 6:1 you have a mention of peoples accepting that Daniel 3 includes:

25 Then Azarias standing up prayed in this manner, and opening his mouth in the midst of the fire, he said:
26 Blessed art thou, O Lord, the God of our fathers, and thy name is worthy of praise, and glorious for ever: 27 For thou art just in all that thou hast done to us, and all thy works are true, and thy ways right, and all thy judgments true.
... 89 O give thanks to the Lord, because he is good: because his mercy endureth for ever and ever. 90 O all ye religious, bless the Lord the God of gods: praise him and give him thanks, because his mercy endureth for ever and ever.

If you accepted the Jewish OT canon, why are "Samuel and Kings" four books, like in the LXX, instead of two?

Are You a Christian With Doubts? Stop Doing This.
Testify | 23 Sept. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDvEYlwo_F0

Thanks for reminding me, I have to check of HolyKoolaid made a part 2 on Tower of Babel, or if he's still shook up after my answers to his "part 1" ...

0:35 Just in case you thought of me, check out what I am saying to Mr. Henke.

What Henke Responded - up to "Henke2022aa" (with ab and ai looked up in advance, since referred to in previous)
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2022/09/what-henke-responded-up-to-henke2022aa.html

It's perhaps not your style of apologetics, but if you consider me a doubter, that's pretty absurd by now.

2:03 "To some of which no satisfactory answer can be given" - like?

If you happen to have a case in point, hand it over, I'll see what I can do!

We’re all in the truthseeking gang

@WAIT_TG

Here is one: Why does Satan do evil if it brings about greater good?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@We’re all in the truthseeking gang The question can be taken two ways.

1) why is Satan doing it, if it's not going to further his purpose?
2) why is it evil, when not doing so?

To the first, he is bringing down some souls, so it is furthering as much of his purpose as he can get.
To the second, his purpose remains an evil one, even if it is one not fully realised, but rather overturned, by the mercy of God.

We’re all in the truthseeking gang

@Hans-Georg Lundahl I’ll take 1):
To that reply I will ask:

Does God deem it ultimately good that Satan brings down some souls?

If yes: Satan is working for God, not against God
If no: because God desires good, and God knows all things, and God can do all things, why doesn’t God prevent it?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@We’re all in the truthseeking gang

God allows some evil, because He can make a greater good out of it.

If my mother hadn't been raped, she might have cared less for my father when meeting him. Is rape serving God just because God wanted me to be made?

Rape is still rape, sin is still sin, evil is still evil - and God brings good out of it, but ows no thanks to those doing evil.

4:02 "over the past few centuries"

Like, why not over the past 2000 years? I mean, is it because that could bring someone to Catholicism?

Between Albigensians and St. Thomas Aquinas, I know whom I want on my side in an Apologetics quest (but then again, I converted to Catholicism in 1988, basically for this reason).

Logician_Bones

Most likely to stay up-to-date on discoveries.

Just another Baptist Jew

Honestly, Athanasius was incredibly helpful in my discussions with Jehovah Witnesses

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Just another Baptist Jew For instance.

Yes.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Logician_Bones Most objections aren't really all that new or all that related to discoveries.

For those that are - well, I'd say the discoveries since 1950 are pretty relevant for Young Earth Creationist Apologetics.

I'm not neglecting CMI or AiG, though I sometimes disagree with them.

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Mere percentage of objections with no regard for how relevant they are or impactful isn't enough though. I don't know even know how you would begin to quantify that percent, but I do know it comes up a lot on VERY important subjects. Especially in social sciences re: the findings of JP Holding. I didn't really even have CMI/AiG in mind in that statement much, but yes, those too. Also a lot about direct Christianity evidence has been refined well, like that of Strobel.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Logician_Bones "Especially in social sciences"

Those aren't legitmately sciences.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Logician_Bones "Mere percentage of objections with no regard for how relevant they are or impactful"

I meant most of those that are around and impactful and seen as relavant now.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Logician_Bones As you mentioned Mr. Holding, we have our differences.

He mistakes I Cor 7:1 Now concerning the thing whereof you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. ... for a Malthusian statement, based on the hypothesis that "the present concern" was:

• a starvation prophecied and mentioned in Acts (but not in Corinthians)
• in support of which he presents a monument praising a dole distributor as giving disaster relief.

He further pretends contraception is OK.

He further pretends that earlier lower marriageable ages as well as "prejudice" against contraception were due to people mostly dying around 35.

Apart from high infant mortality, they were more usually getting past 60, and not seldom past 70, somewhat less often past 80 - if they survived to 20. I'm speaking of the Middle Ages.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

If I didn't like his work at all (I've only seen youtubes, not read his books), I wouldn't have known him enough to get into these conflicts with him.

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Social science follows the scientific method and makes reliable predictions; it's a science. It consistently "resolves" alleged contradictions and such. As for the rest, I didn't say he's perfect; the findings are the point, not him (and I haven't seen him saying any of those things, and I've read pretty much his whole website, watched all his vids, and watched his comments on those vids for years -- for whatever it's worth).

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl The point about infant mortality has been discussed on his channel in comments before. I don't recall exactly what he said but it was obvious "you're dying at 35" is just a summary of the average. The point is they needed more time (or at least perceived themselves as needing and God accommodated it perhaps in a way like Matthew 19:8) to make up for the high death rates; real life didn't operate "other than this group" -- all groups' deaths counted and had to be countered.

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Further details: Claim: JP Holding "pretends contraception is OK" (presumably meaning abortion types). I found only one article on his website from a search that even has the word in it, and it's in reply to someone who argues we're supposed to just have as many babies as possible carelessly, and I just read the whole thing and nowhere does he endorse abortive contraception.

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl He does point out that the fruitfulness mandate doesn't oppose "contraception," but it seems he has in mind non-abortive means, and he doesn't actually endorse it either way. In fact near the end of the article, the people under review are cited saying that even abstinence is within their definition of contraception that they're arguing against (or at least "birth control" -- the exact words used in that section)!

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl If you mean that he thinks NON-abortive methods of contraception are inherently wrong, that's a different argument, but you would need to support it, not merely baldly assert it. It's obvious that at least one method mentioned in that article isn't wrong. So this wouldn't be "pretending."

Logician_Bones

Claim: "pretends that earlier lower marriageable ages [...] were due to people mostly dying around 35. Apart from high infant mortality, they were more usually getting past 60". This same article actually had a brief paragraph that shows Holding is NOT unaware of the influence of infant mortality on this number:

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl |In the OT world, infant and child mortality was exceptionally high. In addition, the average human lifespan was around 35 years. In contrast, infant and child mortality in the modern West is extremely low, with such persons living well into their 80s and 90s.|

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Also I was pretty sure he had material about another passage that describes a long lifespan and was claimed to be a contradiction, and a quick search of "lifespan" shows it as included in the first result (which is the Psalms hub page, linking to another), although I got backwards in memory what it was said to contradict (the much longer pre-Moses lifespans):

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl |Psalms 90:10 This says our lifespan is 70; what of all the people who lived to be 400, 900, etc? The skeptic who calls up this one needs to note that Ps. 90:10 is a written well after all of these people and describes current conditions at the time of the Psalmist; b) as proverbial literature is hardly stating an absolute and universal number in the first place.|

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl This wording allows that an average lifespan of those who do survive birth and early childhood can be quite long compared to 35.

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Your claim also isn't clear if you understand there were other factors, like that other nations would or at least could have been having kids as early as possible to have as many potential soldiers as possible for wars against Israel and others, and in pre-modern-tech ages number of soldiers was a more relevant factor for winning a war, so they had good reason to match this as best they could, for national self-defense, regardless of lifespan.

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Both factors have gone away in more recent times, so a higher priority today is to wait until people are mentally mature enough, so it's good for the minimum age to be much higher.

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl We'd have to search everything Holding and his recommended sources say to see precisely how much of that he's explicitly said or likely endorsed, but pretty sure I remember most of those points from there.

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Claim: You also added this bit in that same phrasing: "'prejudice' against contraception were due to people mostly dying around 35." Not sure what you mean by this. Perhaps something from a video that isn't turning up in a text search? I don't see that wording in the only article with the word "contraception" in it, at least.

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl My impression is more that his view is they had legitimate reasons (ancients did) for higher birth rates, not that these made them "prejudiced" against (non-abortive) contraception, though that could certainly have happened too. But he's said IIRC that ancients tended to be MORE understanding of how a heirarchy of morals applies legitimate exceptions and if the modern situation were explained to them it seems more likely they would be open to lower modern birth rates.

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl But are you sure that's how this word "prejudice" was being used? As far as I can recall, he almost always uses it of moderns, not of ancients, though I'm sure with some exceptions. For whatever it's worth a text search shows only 7 hits, none of them fitting this wording.

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Claim: Holding's view of the "present crisis" in 1 Corinthians 7 is a "mistake" and a "Malthusian statement." It's unclear if you think the hypothesis of a famine is a mistake or if you realize Holding is saying that "good for a man not to touch a woman" is likely a Corinthian view that Paul partially repudiates. 1b is likely a quote, although Paul's response in 2 doesn't necessarily negate it, but Holding says:

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl |It is recognized that 7:1 is Paul quoting back a Corinthian viewpoint. Apparently due to the famine, some perceived that it would be good to abstain for sexual intercourse, and Paul responds to this by noting that married persons did have this obligation to one another.|

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl On the famine he says:

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl |It will surprise such speculators to be told that the words "present distress" do not indicate any sort of eshcatological event, but rather a food shortage in Corinth. Winter shows that there were severe grain shortages in the 40s and 50s AD (cf. the shortage predicted in Acts) which in turn produced social distress (riots, crime). Paul speaks of the distress as present, not as impending or future. This is not an eschatological warning.|

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl That it was seen as a famine I did recall (and noted just last week in reviewing another book that doesn't consider it), but I don't recall anything Malthusian about it.

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl I think you would need to add more clarifications and justifications to make anything of this. It certainly makes sense during a famine to abstain from bringing more mouths to feed into the world temporarily; this is hardly Malthusian (which specifically says population tends to outgrow food supply, which is actually the opposite of Holding's view of ancients, and the advice Paul evidently quotes here would actually prevent Malthus's paranoia from being justified).

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Paul does advise remaining single in response to it, but only due to that kind of local and temporary problem. Holding recognizes this and says:

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl |Far from advising against marriage for all time, or because of the end of the world as some say, Paul is speaking on an entirely different topic.|

Logician_Bones

@Hans-Georg Lundahl As for Holding's view of Malthus's claims, I couldn't find any result on his website by that name or Malthusian. I think again you need to provide more backup.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Logician_Bones "It's obvious that at least one method mentioned in that article isn't wrong."

Which one?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Logician_Bones Two questions:
1) did you post the link in a separate comment, I don't see it;
2) which year is it from? Could be from after our quarrel, when he looked at the evidence without being disturbed by what he felt as my grating presence?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Logician_Bones Is this a quote from his article?

"|In the OT world, infant and child mortality was exceptionally high."

How does he pretend to know this? There are two instances of infant mortality mentioned in the OT, Solomon's older brother and the case he resolved around the two women's one surviving child.

"In addition, the average human lifespan was around 35 years."

By saying "in addition" it does not seem clear that he means the 35 years are taking infant mortality into account and that a considerably higher age was attainable if you looked away from infant mortality.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Logician_Bones I wonder if he looked up Psalms 90:10 after our dispute.

Anyway, he had attacked the Quiverfull movement, and my latest addition to this dispute was from 2016, June.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Logician_Bones "It's unclear if you think the hypothesis of a famine is a mistake or if you realize Holding is saying that "good for a man not to touch a woman" is likely a Corinthian view that Paul partially repudiates."

It is good for a man not to touch a woman is by St. Paul said universally for all ages of the Church : celibacy is the preferred state.

It has nothing to do with a starvation, Corinth was not likely to be touched by a starvation (yes there was one) and the official subsidies giver who had a monument was definitely there as such with or without starvation, since that was Caesarian policy (known as Annona) dealing with the poor.

So, the meaning is : celibacy is the preferred state. Unless - see the following - one is not chaste as a celibate. In that case, marriage is definitely preferrable. "It is better to marry than to burn" (by desires not sufficiently mastered).

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Logician_Bones "It will surprise such speculators to be told that the words "present distress" do not indicate any sort of eshcatological event,"

What is the Greek for "distress" here?

Nestle Aland for "present concerns" has :
Περὶ δὲ ὧν ἐγράψατε, ...
But about the things that you wrote ...

It has some alternative reading usually translated "present concerns" because it was present to Paul by the letter and a concern as an ongoing debate in Corinth.

Winter (as cited by Holding) is trying to make sociology at a distance of over 19 centuries, and that's sociological pseudo-science at its worst.

Keatsian Nightingale Defended Diversity of Johannine Corpus

Biased Bart Ehrman Hits Irony Overload (ft. Tim McGrew)
Testify, 15 Nov. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfH0fO8Vzmg

Initial comment:

Is this mostly about the Gospel of St. John and how the narrator (but mostly not Jesus) uses the word "Jews"?

In 90, on Patmos, the Jewish heritage Christian community that heard St. John got a message from Christ that their enemies in the ethnic Jewish community (at least locally) had gone so far that in the eyes of The King of the Jews Himself, they were not Jews.

In c. 100, in the Gospel, he is himself telling them by his word choice, that for social purposes, they nevertheless had to call their enemies "Jews" ...

I suppose getting harrassed by people first protecting you against the now Roman persecution, then asking if you were serious about being Christian, then delivering you to the Romans to get persecuted and eaten by lions would tend to foster a somewhat orrery "outgroup bias" against those Jews who were doing that, and who since Jamnia were claiming the name "Jews" for themselves.

Dialogue:

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

11:32 The ones mocking Jesus, btw, I think the order is Matthew (30's / 40's), Mark and Luke (50's or 60's), John (c. 100), appear only in Matthew and Mark ...

I think the real point is, the audience is getting less Jewish, therefore less likely to pick up on the first words of Psalm 21 (22 in some Bibles).

Beserk Fan

@Bones18

I doubt John is that late.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

He is, @Bones18 , since his Gospel is post-Patmos.

Smidlee

@smidlee7747

@hglundahl There is some doubts since John didn't mention the destruction of the temple in his gospel. The gospel writers were quick to point out Jesus fulfilling prophecy yet didn't mention the destruction of the temple as one of them. We know the early church did indeed pointed this out as fulfilled exactly as Jesus said it would.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

OK, @smidlee7747 , there is a difference of Jesus fulfilling OT prophecy and prophecies of Jesus being fulfilled.

The destruction of the temple was obvious, didn't need pointing out in a Gospel. The OT fulfilments are on some level less obvious, since Jews go on missing them up to this day. That's why they were specifically pointed out, including rules about the paschal lamb being prophetic of the Redeemer and Eucharistic Bread (why His bones were not broken, specifically Gospel of John).

Keatsian Nightingale

@keatsiannightingale9256

@hglundahl The Patristic testimony is not clear on that point, I don’t think. By all accounts John survived Patmos and even did a little more preaching and ministering in the times of Nerva, but he probably died before Trajan took the throne.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

OK, but @keatsiannightingale9256 ... either way it seems he wrote the Gospel after Patmos.

I'm referring to the Acta Sancti Iohannis which were followed in Ælfric's sermon on him.

It makes sense logically that he first reassures Christians of Jewish origin, that in the views of the King of the Jews they are the real Jews, and only then trains them to use the word Jews about the sect usurping it at Jamnia, so, I'd go with the Acta, even if I don't trust its identification of the Gospeller with the Son of Zebedee, and even if other Fathers disagree.

Keatsian Nightingale

@hglundahl I’m not terribly persuaded John put the pen to paper for the gospel, but another associate. The gospel is still John’s just not by his hand. Or maybe he wrote Revelation himself and a scribe helped with the gospel. The original Greek of the two documents are incredibly different.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

The content is incredibly different.

The Apocalypse is :

• visions of heaven and hell
• visions of miseries and persecutions on earth

The Gospel is :

• miracles and speeches set in everyday situations
• some philosophy about what Jesus is at the start
• theology about how He fulfils OT prophecy (including kashrut, as those about not breaking the bones of the Paschal lamb)

Authors these days write incredibly different when writing on incredibly different topics, right?

Keatsian Nightingale

@hglundahl Not exactly. I am not troubled by the idea that the apostle on the island, having no company and no assistant, was made able to write the Apocalypse down. It bears worthy note that the style is very vulgar, the work of one likely not formally trained in Greek. This fits John son of Zebedee well. The gospel is my much more ornate in its Greek, as are the letters. I think the best explanation is that an associate of the apostle wrote the gospel and assisted with the letters based on the apostle’s real testimony to what he saw and wanted to say, but John the apostle actually penned the Apocalypse, as the early church unanimously assigns that text to his hand. If you ever get a chance to pick up or acquire a Greek NT to compare the language and overall writing style, I think you will see what I mean. You can probably find one version online even.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"not formally trained in Greek."

Sure of that? More like very formally trained in the tradition of Ezechiel and Daniel, I'd say?

"The gospel is my much more ornate in its Greek"

Or more Greek? Less Hebrew?

Would fit the agenda of acclimating an audience to not flaunting Hebrew origins all the time.

"John the apostle actually penned the Apocalypse, as the early church unanimously assigns that text to his hand."

Not really, since it was one of the books latest to get universal acceptance.

"a Greek NT to compare the language and overall writing style, I think you will see what I mean."

My Greek grammar is actually not brushed up enough to note things like more use of certain tenses ... though perhaps conditionals are less likely to appear in an Apocalyptic vision than in Jesus saying "if you believed Moses" ...

Would you, no doubt better versed as of lately in Greek than I, give two examples from each book, same type of idea expressed in a more Greek and a less Greek way?

Keatsian Nightingale

@hglundahl Why would we suppose either Ezekiel or Daniel knew Greek? I am not sure what you meant by that. Yes, I am sure John did not receive formal Greek training. While it is by no means improbable he could have acquired Greek orally and a little in writing, I doubt he ever would have been proficient in its written use.

In the time of Christ and the apostles it would have been Aramaic, not Hebrew, that was the primary tongue of Israel at the time. The preponderance of evidence shows Jesus spoke Aramaic throughout his life, not Hebrew or Greek. I don’t think flaunting his Semitic origins is something he cared about at all, not unlike Paul who mentions his heritage in no less than three of his epistles and multiple speeches in Acts.

Yes, Revelation was one of the last to gain universal acceptance (I can see why) but the earliest written testimonies we have all point to John the Apostle being the actual author (Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria).

I am just starting to formally learn Koine Greek myself at seminary, but I’ve done enough perusing of my Greek NT to see the noticeably different style and language of the gospel of John and the Apocalypse. It is as noticeably different a style as the gospels of Mark and Luke. Like Mark, the author of the Apocalypse uses “Kai” at the beginning of a great number of his sentences at a much greater proportion and frequency than in John. Because both writers are writing narratives, it would follow that their narration style would be reflected in both texts about the same. There is no distinctively Johannine element in Revelation, no reflection of any essential contents or themes reflected in the Gospel or epistles. If anything, the elements in the Apocalypseare decidedly synoptic, as the “whoever has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” and the “I will confess his name before my Father and His angels”.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@keatsiannightingale9256 "Why would we suppose either Ezekiel or Daniel knew Greek?"

I'm not presuming that. I am presuming that the Hebrew syntax in these books has influenced St. John.

"Yes, I am sure John did not receive formal Greek training. While it is by no means improbable he could have acquired Greek orally and a little in writing, I doubt he ever would have been proficient in its written use."

Over decades living among Greek speakers? + doesn't work very well if he was a Cohen, who would have known Greek from his training (you know "know your enemy" + clashes in the Maccabaean times).

"In the time of Christ and the apostles it would have been Aramaic, not Hebrew, that was the primary tongue of Israel at the time. The preponderance of evidence shows Jesus spoke Aramaic throughout his life, not Hebrew or Greek."

Jesus knowing also Hebrew: he read a prophecy in a synaogue, and not one of the books written in Aramaic (though Daniel precisely is one such book).

Jesus knowing also either Greek or Latin or both: he grew up in Galilee (a k a Galilee of the Gentiles to some), and St. Joseph worked on a new building project near Nazareth / in Nazareth. And he communicated fluently with a Roman officer, who is not quite likely to have taken the trouble to learn Aramaic. Obviously the Centurion who hit His side with the lance, St. Longinus, was not making his remark in Aramaic, so the Apostle who heard him would have known Latin or more probably Greek (a Classic author, also called Longinos, wrote in Greek).

My point is, the exotic parts, to a native Greek ear, in the Apocalypse, are not ineptitude in Greek, but straight copying of the language of Daniel and Ezechiel.

I asked you to give two sentences of semantically parallel content between the Gospel and the Apocalypse to show where the Greek of the Gospel is more ornate. You didn't comply, you are simply asking me to rely on a set of experts without any other evidence than their authority.

"Like Mark, the author of the Apocalypse uses “Kai” at the beginning of a great number of his sentences at a much greater proportion and frequency than in John."

In Mark, that would illustrate St. Peter was using a very Semitic Greek, since Hebrew has lots of sentences in "ve" ... the same background in the Apocalypse would indicate St. John was consciously calquing Hebrew content, or perhaps he received the vision in Hebrew or Aramaic and then translated it to Greek, word for word.

"Because both writers are writing narratives, it would follow that their narration style would be reflected in both texts about the same."

Is describing a vision the same thing as writing a narrative set in 1st C AD fisherman and Jerusalem everyday Palestine?

"There is no distinctively Johannine element in Revelation, no reflection of any essential contents or themes reflected in the Gospel or epistles. If anything, the elements in the Apocalypseare decidedly synoptic"

Oh, thematic correspondences or lack of such are nearly no clue at all to common or diverse authorship. At best, a commonality of themes can confirm common authorship if otherwise known or suspected, but it can not on its own sufficiently point to such, and lack of it definitely cannot point to diversity of authorship.

If St. John had already covered lost of Synoptic themes in the Apocalypse, as you say, it could be a reason to leave them out in his Gospel, which is written later.

Keatsian Nightingale

@hglundahl If you are suggesting that Jesus knew Latin, there’s not much for me to work with. You are suggestible to many implausibilities if that’s the case. The whole story of St. Loginus is Medieval fiction and not rooted in history. If you put that on par with top-notch critical scholarship, you are bound to make many mistakes in your analysis. The evidence we have only has Jesus speaking Aramaic explicitly. Perhaps we could include some limited Greek. But even in the case of the Roman centurion of Matthew 8 and Luke 7, there’s no reason one of whom it was said “He loves our nation” would and could not have learned the local dialect. The idea that Jesus knew Latin is the stuff of factionalized versions of Jesus’ life from the 19th century. I’ve read enough critical notes of Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita to pick up at least this. So I ask: what actual evidence, if any, supports the notion that Jesus spoke any Latin or Greek?

I didn’t provide Greek text because it is simply not convenient to do so in this format, as you must obviously know. However, your contention that narrative in a vision versus in a true account must differ stylistically simply does not stack up. Obviously there’s nothing inherent in the language of Greek or Hebrew that would incline an author to just use the word “and” at the beginning of sentences in a vision narrative to a greater degree than in a normal narrative. The evidence of this is simply a basic comparison of the narrative language of Mark versus that of Matthew, another author of the NT who allegedly first wrote his gospel in Hebrew, although no definite evidence shows this is so. Additionally, is there any evidence that John is emulating the style of Greek Ezekiel or Greek Daniel?

And no, you are dead wrong about thematic and lingual correspondence. Even authors as recent as Shakespeare have recurring themes, ideas and word sequences throughout all their writings. This is very evident in Paul’s letters, especially the ones that are authentic in contradistinction to those that are questioned. Paul’s usage of words in a number of his letters is a great indication that if it used in an entirely different way in another text, it may indicate the same author is not behind both. Scholars have recognized this habit in the Pastorals for decades now.

As for Revelation, a lack of any direct theological, historical or thematic cohesion with the gospel and epistles is just as valid a way of doubting a common author as the presence of those things indicates a common author in the case of the gospel and epistles.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@keatsiannightingale9256 "If you are suggesting that Jesus knew Latin, there’s not much for me to work with. You are suggestible to many implausibilities if that’s the case."

How is it implausible that Jesus met Romans speaking Latin, as well as Romans speaking Greek in Galilee? Galil ha Goyim = Galilee of the Gentiles. Note, I said, "Latin, or Greek, or both" .... Greek might be the most plausible. But I am not excluding Latin too.

"The whole story of St. Loginus is Medieval fiction and not rooted in history."

a) Is Matthew 27:54 Medieval fiction too?
b) Is Queen Helen finding the Holy Cross Medieval fiction too? Stephan Borgehammar is a top notch critical scholar and has defended the thesis the story goes back to the time of the "purported" events.
c) Is "rooted in history" = rooted in modern critical scholarship?

"If you put that on par with top-notch critical scholarship, you are bound to make many mistakes in your analysis."

No, I don't put Medieval legends on par with top notch critical scholarship, I put them usually far above it.

"The evidence we have only has Jesus speaking Aramaic explicitly."

And implicit evidence, as for Hebrew in the synagogue doesn't count? I'll return to the centurion in a moment.

"But even in the case of the Roman centurion of Matthew 8 and Luke 7, there’s no reason one of whom it was said “He loves our nation” would and could not have learned the local dialect."

Similarily, there is no reason one who was astonished at Roman obedience would not and could not have learned one or both languages of the Romans, at least to some degree.

"what actual evidence, if any, supports the notion that Jesus spoke any Latin or Greek?"

The exact same evidence you have that the centurion spoke any Aramaic. Opportunity and probability of willingness. Especially as Jesus probably was in Alexandria during the stay in Egypt. That's specially in favour of Greek.

"it is simply not convenient to do so in this format, as you must obviously know."

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.
Ἀποκάλυψις Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ἣν ἔδωκεν αὐτῷ ὁ θεός, δεῖξαι τοῖς δούλοις αὐτοῦ ἃ δεῖ γενέσθαι ἐν τάχει, καὶ ἐσήμανεν ἀποστείλας διὰ τοῦ ἀγγέλου αὐτοῦ τῷ δούλῳ αὐτοῦ Ἰωάννῃ,

Calling your bluff.

"However, your contention that narrative in a vision versus in a true account must differ stylistically"

I did not contend anything about "vision" vs "true account" but "vision" vs "everyday situations".
I also did not contend anything about "must" I am fine with "reasonably could" -- which is enough to refute your pretended proof for diverse authorship.

I contend that in fact St. John the Gospeller knew Ezechiel and Daniel and drew on them when describing his visions, for reason of stylistic ... aemulatio autorum? (Like Virgil emulated Homer and Apollonius).
I contend that in fact St. John the Gospeller also had an everyday speech and drew on that when writing the Gospel.

"Obviously there’s nothing inherent in the language of Greek or Hebrew that would incline an author to just use the word “and” at the beginning of sentences in a vision narrative to a greater degree than in a normal narrative."

Another deliberate strawman of my position. There is something inherent in Hebrew which inclines an author making a calque on Hebrew to use "kai" where Hebrew has "ve" ... an imitatio autorum directed to Daniel and Ezechiel would obviously tend to make the Greek precisely that kind of calque. In the Gospel, he's basically part of inventing the genre, if anything his models are the synoptics.

"Additionally, is there any evidence that John is emulating the style of Greek Ezekiel or Greek Daniel?"

I don't know. The reason I asked you to provide evidence from Gospel and Apocalypse is, my Greek is too rusty to make that kind of comparison. In Latin I could definitely see the difference between Summa and Postilla in Libros Geneseos, I believe St. Thomas wrote the first in Roccasecca, and brushed up his Latin a lot when arriving among Dominicans. In Greek, I can't do that comparison.

My contention is that St. John (a Cohen according to the thesis of Jean Colson) knew Daniel and Ezechiel in Hebrew / Aramaic.

Before you mix the thesis of Colson with the idea of two authors (as the man introducing me to Colson did, it seems to be fashionable), and before you take St. Irenaeus as warrant for the Son of Zebedee being the author of the Apocalypse, let me note that Colson precisely attributes a mix-up to St. Irenaeus who left Asia Minor at age 16 (i e before having an opportunity to sort the two different John's out). You know, the top-notch critical scholarship of Colson ...

"Even authors as recent as Shakespeare have recurring themes, ideas and word sequences throughout all their writings."

Rape of Lucrece ~ A Twelfth Night. Theme "classic" does not count, as it is known to be common between both, in advance.
Silmarillion and The Hobbit (dragons doesn't count, as Smaug / Glaurung is known to have that reference in both works).

If you state "even ... as recent as" you are basically implying that stylistic variation between works is a clear option within human feasability. This makes the supposed universal up to Shakespear totally moot.

"This is very evident in Paul’s letters, especially the ones that are authentic in contradistinction to those that are questioned."

In other words, for one guesswork of different authorships, you are appealing to another such guesswork, and one that is apostatic in tendency. You are at least showing where your bias is, and I hold it to be a superstitious one as well as an apostatic one.

"Scholars have recognized this habit in the Pastorals for decades now."

You mean they are finally catching up on common things between Romans and Pastorals? They may do so between Gospel and Apoc.

Footnoting Two Videos "Erik vs Bart"

Ehrman EXPOSED: A Deceptive Gospel "Contradiction"
Testify, 7 April 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc2Im2T7ha4

2:15 I think I would disagree on the assessment of those being the most reliable manuscripts.

Early and reliable do not always match up.

The early manuscipts we still have are the early ones that survived for some reason.

Some cases, the reason may well be that the Church laid a specific text aside as a faulty copy. This is how I read the discovery story of the Sinaiticus. The monks said "we don't know what this is" ... this was taken as crass ignorance, they had a very old Bible manuscript and didn't recognise it was that.

I take it as what the monks there had been saying since a few decades after the Sinaiticus was written, since it came to the Sinai monastery : "we don't know what it is" = whether it qualifies as a Bible or not.

If a Bible is not opened for 1400 years, it's probably in a better shape than Bibles that continued to be opened, most of which got torn or worn pretty quickly, within a century or two.

— · — · — · — · — · —

But if we assume there really was a broken off narrative - it's probably where Mark ceased to take dictation from Peter who was reading alternatively from Matthew and Luke and adding here and there a remark of his own ...

The thing St. Peter thought marvellous was that there was such a harmony between Matthew and Luke, and Mark taking down dictation without noticing he was reading from two scrolls was the byproduct of that - this is obviously not the Augustinian narrative about the Synoptics, but the Stromatistic one ...

IF this is the reason for such a break off, it is possible that an already extant essay about the resurrection was added to it and some did not feel it belonged to the Gospel proper. But that too would be from the pen of St. Mark and mouth of St. Peter.

— · — · — · — · — · —

Biased Bart Ehrman Hits Irony Overload (ft. Tim McGrew)
Testify, 15 Nov. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfH0fO8Vzmg

Is this mostly about the Gospel of St. John and how the narrator (but mostly not Jesus) uses the word "Jews"?

In 90, on Patmos, the Jewish heritage Christian community that heard St. John got a message from Christ that their enemies in the ethnic Jewish community (at least locally) had gone so far that in the eyes of The King of the Jews Himself, they were not Jews.

In c. 100, in the Gospel, he is himself telling them by his word choice, that for social purposes, they nevertheless had to call their enemies "Jews" ...

I suppose getting harrassed by people first protecting you against the now Roman persecution, then asking if you were serious about being Christian, then delivering you to the Romans to get persecuted and eaten by lions would tend to foster a somewhat orrery "outgroup bias" against those Jews who were doing that, and who since Jamnia were claiming the name "Jews" for themselves.

— · — · — · — · — · —

11:32 The ones mocking Jesus, btw, I think the order is Matthew (30's / 40's), Mark and Luke (50's or 60's), John (c. 100), appear only in Matthew and Mark ...

I think the real point is, the audience is getting less Jewish, therefore less likely to pick up on the first words of Psalm 21 (22 in some Bibles).

A Dialogue off a Tangent from a Testify Video

A Dialogue off a Tangent from a Testify Video · Dialogue Continued

Here is a video by Erik Manning ...

Ehrman Says Matthew Mistranslated Old Testament Stuff and I Respond Because of Course I Am
Testify, 26 June 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62ZNEuQD3d4

... which by 1:38 had mentioned "multiple sources" ... and here is a comment tangential to that, and a dialogue that followed:

@hglundahl

1:38 Multiple sources ... comes from a 19th C. school in historiography from my own country Sweden, the so called Weibull school.

• Multiple, independent sources
• from more than one party (in cases of conflict) can replace being from someone independent of the party
• that are documents rather than narratives
• and that are contemporary.

For a 19th C. AD event, yeah, if only one newspaper ran a story only after the one or those concerned were dead, in a narrative that doesn't cite documents that can be identified ... for a century with so much documentation still left for us to view as the 19th C. AD, that little documentation is fishy.

Even with the Middle Ages, this Weibull criterium becomes trickier to rely on, and when it comes to Late Antiquity or earlier, being consistently Weibull = ruling out historicity of Alexander (no sources contemporary) and of Julius Caesar conquering Gaul (while Cicero is anti-Caesarian, his pleas before Caesar - pro rege Deiotaro and pro Ligario - which I have not read, may well have no mention at all of Gallic Wars, and all later ones - like Livy - are as pro-Caesarian as Caesar).

I did an F search on Pro Rege Deiotaro, and it doesn't contain the word "Gaul" ....

@michaelhenry1763

Are you saying we should take the ancients word for things?

@hglundahl

@michaelhenry1763 Yes, basically.

@michaelhenry1763

@hglundahl Oh, ok. Well, thanks for being honest. I guess Julius Caesar was divine, Alexander the Great was half divine, and Caesar Augustus was the Son of God.

Praise be the gods, for they interact with us on earth. Romulus also became divine and ascended into heaven.

@hglundahl

@michaelhenry1763 w a i t ... I meant for events.

Not for assessments.

All the things you mentioned are either:

• assessments
• or "events" but such that no one saw and for which the ancients depended on assessments.

I do not take the word of ancients that Siddharta Gautama achieved Nirvana (or whatever) - that's an assessment. I do take the word of ancients that he was a prince who discovered suffering is a reality, state power can't fix all of it, and tried to find an answer, and that his view on things is basically reflected in the text called Tripitaka.

As you mentioned Romulus ... "the apostles loved Jesus, because they saw he was God; the companions of Romulus made him a God, because they loved him" ... that's freely from St. Augustine of Hippo, City of God. I e, he took the word of ancients that Romulus was the first of seven kings.

@michaelhenry1763

@hglundahl I understand what you are trying to say. If I understand you correctly, the ancients are recording the events right, but their conclusions could be wrong. Am I following you?

@hglundahl

@michaelhenry1763 Totally correct, yes.

@michaelhenry1763

@hglundahl ok, people used to think this way a long time ago. For example, Thomas Jefferson thought he could "recover" the historical Jesus simply by eliminating the miracle stories. Unfortunately, not only will the ancients "conclude" incorrectly, but they might invent stories of events or sayings. For example, Romulus is a mythical figure along with all the first Roman kings of the regal period.

It is similar in the Hebrew Bible. Everyone in the Torah is mythical and even David and Solomon are legendary. We do not get history until later.

In the New Testament, it is difficult to know what Jesus actually said and we can reconstruct a basic outline of his life.

Because of these issues, we need historical methods to help us determine what most likely happened.

@hglundahl

@michaelhenry1763 "For example, Romulus is a mythical figure along with all the first Roman kings of the regal period."

What exact arguments do you have for this position?

Btw, I totally disagree with Jefferson, since there the observed events themselves very clearly show precisely miracles happened.

For the rest of your modernist views - what exact argument do you have for the positions? In the Catholic Church (at least prior to certain crooks in office now), you'd be pretty quickly excommunicated for what you just said. Since you are obviously not a Catholic, I don't see what effect this could have on you, except to clarify that what you said is a total no no to me, so, let's continue arguing, shall we? You have given a string of assertions, now back them up!

@hglundahl

@michaelhenry1763 "people used to think this way a long time ago."

Wait, was this your argument?

That's called chronological snobbery!

@hglundahl

@michaelhenry1763 OK here are your allegations:

1) Everyone in the Torah is mythical (I suppose you mean made-up)
2) and even David and Solomon are legendary (I suppose you mean real, but very mixed up with made-up accretions).
3) We do not get history until later. (I suppose you mean narrative that's mostly not made up)
4) In the New Testament, it is difficult to know what Jesus actually said
5) and we can reconstruct a basic outline of his life. (I suppose you mean, but not much beyond that).

This cannot be your argument for them:

"we need historical methods to help us determine what most likely happened."

Why so? Because you introduce this by:

"Because of these issues,"

making the five allegations (on my count) not conclusions from this generality, but arguments for it.

This leaves you with a need to provide arguments for these five, and I am still waiting ... are you implying the meme "I asked michaelhenry1763 for his reasons" over a skeleton in waiting pose?

@michaelhenry1763

@hglundahl You think Romulus was real? Ok, a good book to read is SPQR by Mary Beard. It’s a history through the Roman Republic to the first two centuries of the Roman Empire. It also discusses the founding.

You can disagree with Thomas Jefferson. That’s fine. I was only using him as an example.

Miracles are explanations of natural events. They are not the events themselves. For example, maybe some children saw something in the sky above Fatima. Due to their religious upbringing and culture, they interpret what they saw as the Virgin Mary. They call it a miracle.

I do not think I would be excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church because many of its members are philosophically diverse. But you are correct, I am not Catholic, so it would not bother me.

@hglundahl

@michaelhenry1763 I checked the title.

Unfortunately it is after the Cambridge calibration was made.

I read a book from before it, which said city structures begin only by c. 550 BC.

Now, why is the Cambridge calibration important? Hallstatt plateau. The time period of the Hallstatt culture or part of it, is 750 to 450 BC. The thing about it is, all or most actual dates (there are some jags) get a carbon date around 550 BC.

So, out goes the "archaeological proof" that Rome didn't exist at its "supposed" date of foundation. Did she reuse it anyway?

"because many of its members are philosophically diverse."

I think I mentioned that as "some recent crooks" ...

@michaelhenry1763

@hglundahl I am really enjoying this conversation with you. You got my five points correct. We do not need more “ historical methods”. We have the methods. We need more historical and or archeological evidence.

Arguments for the five:

1. The Torah is a mixture of etiological stories and “ laws” for the society to follow. We have no away of knowing how many of these “ laws” were actually implemented in Israelite society. As for the etiological stories, they come from traditions from different schools of writing: JE, P, D, and H. For example, Genesis 1 is a polemic against the Babylonian creation myth. It also explains where the Sabbath day derives. “ see, our God is better, he created the heavens and earth through speaking. He did not have to fight anyone. He created the sea monsters, creation was not made through them.” The characters in these stories are etiological explanations of where people or nations come from. Isaac is the father of Jews; Ishmael the father of the Arabs and so forth. Where does language come from? The Tower of Babel.
2. Yes, David is legendary. Solomon maybe mythical. We have archeological evidence for the name “ House of David”. We cannot confirm any of the stories about him outside the Bible. 1 & 2 Samuel may have been written close to David’s time because of the “ political spin” throughout the books. However, 1 & 2 Chronicles, written roughly 400 years later, sanitizes much of the Samuels books.
3. What I mean by history, is that we cannot get outside corroboration until the fall of the northern kingdom in 721 BCE and the fall of the southern kingdom between 602 BCE and 586 BCE.
4. It is difficult to know what Jesus actually said based on the sources we have. For example, post-resurrection stories are invented. Did later scribes change anything, add, rearrange? The longer ending of Mark, for example, was added later is an attempt to harmonize it with Matthew and Luke.
5. Yes, we can reconstruct the basics of Jesus’ life based on the nature of our sources. For example, we can say that Jesus was crucified for the charge “ King of the Jews” and he was baptized by John the Baptist. Why? There are many reasons. Here is a few: we can know that Jesus was crucified because how Paul and the gospel writers treat that event. We also have outside corroboration from Josephus and Tacitus. The baptism seems clear by how Matthew, Luke and John either change it or attempt to ignore it because it does not fit into their theologies. Mark is pretty straight forward, Matthew adds a story, Luke has John arrested before Jesus is baptized and John ignores it all together.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you want me to explain further.

@michaelhenry1763

@hglundahl no, no there were settlements much older in the Rome area.

It just that the “ Roman founding” as described by the ancients are mythical. It does not mean there were not people living there in some way.

I am not Roman Catholic and I do not want to criticize it beyond the obvious. There are plenty of members of the Roman Catholic Church to criticize it , they do not need me too. If people have sincere belief or faith, I respect that.

Calvinism, Big No

Testify, alias Erik Manning, as an Anglican, has one big fault in not condemning Calvinism, but otherwise his non-Calvinist reading of Romans 9 is excellent stuff:

Confronting Calvinism Led Her To Atheism
Testify, 4 June 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qXcJyg7kNI

My comments are two, first at 3:02, I give the Catholic answer - not mine, but Challoners and Witham's and Haydock's - to the Calvinist misreading of Romans 9. Then, at 10:41, I object to Erik Manning saying Calvinism or not Calvinism is not salvation essential. My answer is, by now it is, because the Church has defined we must reject Calvinism.

3:02 As Catholicism has condemned Calvinism, it is perhaps not surprising that Catholics commented on Romans 9.

This involves bishop Challoner.

After the textblock 16 - 20 we get this inserted comment section.

[16] "Not of him that willeth": That is, by any power or strength of his own, abstracting from the grace of God.

[17] "To this purpose": Not that God made him on purpose that he should sin, and so be damned; but foreseeing his obstinacy in sin, and the abuse of his own free will, he raised him up to be a mighty king, to make a more remarkable example of him: and that his power might be better known, and his justice in punishing him, published throughout the earth.

[18] "He hardeneth": Not by being the cause or author of his sin, but by withholding his grace, and so leaving him in his sin, in punishment of his past demerits.

Douay Rheims is basically available in two packages.

1) With Challoners inserted comments
2) With Haydock's facing comments.

Here is the fuller Haydock comment, citing obviously Challoner:

Ver. 15-16. I will have mercy, &c. Then it is not of him that willeth, &c. By these words he again teaches that God's call and predestination of those whom he has decreed to save, is not upon account of any works or merits in men, but only to be attributed to the mercy and goodness of God. See St. Thomas Aquinas on this chap. lect. iii. See St. Augustine, Encher. chap. xcviii. Epis. 194. in the new Ed. Ep. 105. ad Sixtum de lib. Arbit. chap. xxv. &c. (Witham)

Ver. 17. For the Scripture saith to Pharao, &c. St. Paul had shewn that there was no injustice in God by his giving special graces to the elect; now he shews that God cannot be accounted unjust for leaving the reprobate in their sins, or for punishing them as they deserve; for this purpose he brings the example of Pharao, who remained hardened against all the admonitions and chastisements of him and his kingdom. --- Have I raised thee up, placed thee king over Egypt; I have done so many miracles before thee, I have spared thee when thou deservedst to be punished with death, and at last shall punish thee with thy army in the Red Sea, that my name may be known over all the earth. (Witham)

Ver. 18. And whom he will, he hardeneth.[3] That is, permits to be hardened by their own malice, as it is divers times said in Exodus, that Pharao hardened his heart. God, says St. Augustine, is said to harden men's hearts, not by causing their malice, but by not giving them the free gift of his grace, by which they become hardened by their own perverse will. (Witham) --- Not by being the cause, or author of his sin, but by withholding his grace, and so leaving him in his sin, in punishment of his past demerits. (Challoner)

Ver. 19. &c. Thou wilt say, therefore, to me, &c. The apostle makes objection, that if God call some, and harden, or even permit others to be hardened, and no one resisteth, or can hinder his absolute will, why should God complain that men are not converted? St. Paul first puts such rash and profane men in mind, that is unreasonable and impertinent for creatures to murmur and dispute against God their Creator, when they do not comprehend the ways of his providence. --- O man, [4] who art thou that repliest against God? This might stop the mouths, and quiet the minds of every man, when he cannot comprehend the mysteries of predestination, of God's foreknowledge, his decrees and graces, or the manner of reconciling them with human liberty. He may cry out with St. Paul again, (chap. xi. 33.) O the riches of the wisdom, and of the knowledge of God! how incomprehensible are his judgments, and how unsearchable his ways! --- Shall the thing formed, &c. Hath not the potter power, &c.[5] To teach men that they ought not to complain against God and his providence, when they cannot comprehend his works, he puts them in mind of their origin. Every one may say to God, with the prophet Isaias, (vi. 48.) Lord, thou art our Father, and we are but clay; thou art our Maker who framed us, and we are all of us the work of thy hands. Hath not the potter power as he pleaseth, out of the same lump of clay to make some vessels for honourable uses, and some for less honourable. St. Chrysostom observes very well, that this comparison must not be extended further than the apostle designed; which was to teach us, how submissive we ought to be to God, in what we do not understand; but we must not pretend from hence, nor from any expression in this chapter, as divers heretics have done, that as vessels of clay are destitute of free will and liberty, so are men. This is against the doctrine of the Catholic Church, and against the Scriptures, in many places. (Witham) --- The potter. This similitude is used, only to shew that we are not to dispute with our Maker: nor to reason with him why he does not give as much grace to one as to another: for since the whole lump of our clay is vitiated by sin, it is owing to his goodness and mercy that he makes out of it so many vessels of honour; and it is no more than just that others, in punishment of their unrepented sins, should be given up to be vessels of dishonour. (Challoner)

10:41 As a Catholic, I can only say by now that rejecting Calvinism has long since been a high stake concern.

Trent. Session VI.(1)
Canon 4. If anyone says that man's free will moved and aroused by God, by assenting to God's call and action, in no way cooperates toward disposing and preparing itself to obtain the grace of justification, that it cannot refuse its assent if it wishes, but that, as something inanimate, it does nothing whatever and is merely passive, let him be anathema.

Canon 6. If anyone says that it is not in man's power to make his ways evil, but that the works that are evil as well as those that are good God produces, not permissively only but also propria et per se, so that the treason of Judas is no less His own proper work than the vocation of St. Paul, let him be anathema.

For that matter, since c. 700 years earlier.(2)

Karolus inde (de Soissons) ad Carisiacum (Quierzy) veniens cum quibusdam episcopis et abbatibus monasticis quattuor capitula edidit et propria subscriptione roboravit. Quorum primum est : a Deo neminem prædestinatum ad pœnam, unamque Dei esse prædestinationem, quæ ad donum pertinet gratiæ aut ad retributionem justitiæ. Secundum : liberum arbitrium, quod in primo ordine perdidimus, nobis præveniente et adjuvante Christi gratia redditum. Tertium : velle Deum generaliter omnes homines salvos fieri, licet non omnes salventur. Quartum : Christi sanguinem pro omnibus fusum, licet non omnes passionis mysterio redimantur. Annales Bertiniani, an. 853, P. L., t. CXV, col. 1408.

Adonis Jackson

Grace and Peace to you. Would you like to join our theology group chat on a different platform for further discussion?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Adonis Jackson I don't do chats.

I'd be happy to have a discussion via email, like my three initials + at sign + dr + dot + com.

If you want per group, send a multi-adressee email to myself and to some others, not too many, please!

Notes:

(1) COUNCIL OF TRENT SIXTH SESSION
celebrated on the thirteenth day of January, 1547
DECREE CONCERNING JUSTIFICATION
https://www.k-state.edu/english/baker/english233/Council_of_Trent6.htm

(2) Article du Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique
PREDESTINATION
http://jesusmarie.free.fr/DTC_predestination.html